


Daniel & Armand Fic Box

by whisperbird



Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Gen, M/M, canon-typical discussions of death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 08:33:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10987299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whisperbird/pseuds/whisperbird
Summary: As implied on tin, a collection of various, unrelated Daniel/Armand stories, drabbles, & vignettes.





	1. The Twist

**Author's Note:**

> None of these are beta'd. I'm scum!

Night outside rolls past, a blur of inconsistent cold rain, wipers slow then speeding up a frantic pace, waving like a drowning swimmer.

Daniel shakes cigarette ash into the dark rushing by, sounds, smells, lights passed in a whisper. The rain itself starts a whisper and grows by the minute before quieting shyly back into the clouds.

"And so this kid ...he climbed the tower and jumped off. They finally demolished the place after that."

He exhales the last smoke through the window, into the mouth of the night. The rain is heaving, finally beginning in earnest. He can extinguish the cigarette butt in it. "And the whole memory ... _gone_."

Flicks the dead cigarette remains away.

Daniel starts to light another but crushes an empty pack to his shirt pocket. He talks with his hands sometimes when he's really thinking, really going and smokes one after another. A cigarette poised between his fingers spreads thin coils of gray with gestures, the lighted end a flare. Almost a whole story and he smoked the whole pack.

"This place wasn't dangerous?" Armand cuts in. He's relaxed, elbow rests on the door, a hand wound in his hair as he listens. "Or dangerous before, rather?" Armand is a gentle listener, asking soft-spoken questions.

“It was never dangerous,” murmurs Daniel, stirring a finger in his pocket.

These are the conversations Daniel loves, when any exchange isn't from anger, just the excitement of a challenged philosophy or idea. Contrasted to Armand in an argument or uncomfortable position. When pinioned, Armand is tightened into a taciturn, inexpressive ball. Daniel can't help but back him into a wall sometimes, if only to later appreciate the ease in which he loves him.

Daniel looks up, concluding the pack is empty, and he's arrested for a solid second. It's not fair, the feeling seeing Armand gives him, that languid melt. It renders him useless at the strangest of times, as if he's not expecting it, his odd splendid _monstrous_ lover. He could see Armand every night for a hundred and hundred and one he's thrown off-guard. A hundred nights when he is no less attracted to Armand, even when Armand doesn't blink or stands so still it's impossible to see him as human _._

_Then_ it's a fearful strange desire, but now there's this desire because he's beautiful and looks wholly a young man, something Daniel loves so much, so achingly it makes Daniel want to cry.

Armand leaning his head on his left arm, steering the wheel with his right. He looks like any college kid, perhaps a bit drowsy but deep in either his own thoughts or listening to Daniel. It's a flash of character between the carefully written lines. Armand's gestures and expressions seem innocent and Daniel almost believes the illusion, if only because Armand is his and on these terms he's resplendent.

Daniel comes out of this small sudden dream, moistening his lips and saying, "Oh, God, no, it wasn't dangerous. It was just a dump. It's weird though. All these tract homes just like the other ..." Daniel spreads his hands, forms a square, "nothing _off._ No one cared to clear the lot because it was outside the suburbs. You couldn't see it except a few places because of a fence, 'so out of sight out of mind'. Then it became a social problem."

"It became ugly," Armand replies, with the slightest nod, brush of his head.

"It became visible. Kids smoked there for however long it was abandoned, then drinking or doing drugs. Every area has a place. Suburban kids love these things. But the moment someone couldn't ignore the drugs ..."

Daniel sits back, a hand pressed to his lips, linking the mythology of a childhood memory with the present. Such a visceral, important memory, yet tinged with the vague unreality of a dream.

"I was 10. This was at the beginning of street LSD. Who knows how amateurishly made or how strong the shit the kid bought was. No one even wondered why he climbed up there in the first place." _Concrete stones from the cracked pavement, right after the buildings and tower were torn down scattered like little graves._ He thinks _,_ Did anyone ever buy the property? Did it go back to the earth like every corpse eventually, even the corpses of things?

Daniel sits silently. It's very hard to put these images into words because they're less images and more pure feeling. He brings the image forward mentally, closing his eyes. He wants Armand to probe his brain because he doesn't _want_ words.

The words turned images are: _his childhood home overlooking the lot. Daniel never saw the kid die, even though he could see the tower from his own bedroom window. Nights spent staring down the hill at a distance. Then bulldozers came, and the metal tower demolished . The few buildings, the scraggly pines gone so that there was nothing but a piece of fence, no place for kids to hide._

The night feels so less solid, the more he tries to recapture the lost quality of how this memory feels. He perceives his own history to a point as another life, or in a lost world, brutally different from this Daniel's. And every time, every grasp to feel substantial about it is ethereal.

He doesn't finish his story and Armand doesn't ask him to.

Daniel realizes, indistinct, that rain is coming through the window and observes it in the same way he remembers his past life. Through a fog. Pushed up over a skinny forearm, his tucked shirt sleeve darkens with pinpricks of water, and he looks down at it, not comprehending. He rolls the window half-up in a response, as if it's someone else, not him, getting rained upon without awareness. Someone else is mindless to the effects of the outside world, and he's only helping them in politeness, aiding an invalid.

Daniel looks out at the night cooling even further from the rain and breathes in. The chilled air smells sharp.

What lays ahead is a cartoon stretch of black, a big charcoal smear on dark paper. It reminds Daniel of the night ocean, that expanse of nothing and then pinpricks of headlights like distant vessels in the sea. The difference is these lights come closer, then slide past, leaving their car the only source of illumination. The night suffers from an invisible moon, and the gruesome alienation special to highways in America. Sacs of wet rain clouds fill the sky and so block the stars from giving their distant but fixed companionship.

_But he has Armand_. If he's with Armand, Daniel is in his entire world. The ever-expanding universe is crushed into a single car if Armand drives the car. They could be the only living things here and roaming a sweep of desolation instead of moving with sporadic traffic of 2 am drivers and _it would matter the same_.

It's almost suffocating in its comfort.

Indeed it is as the more Daniel draws inside himself, the night – once peaceful like a thick blanket -- forms a sinister void. _Plunging to nowhere._ It's so strange, Daniel thinks, how things can change _like that_ , eyes passing over the same images, never registering, until it's suddenly different, grotesque and obvious.

_Everything_ is absurd.

Daniel laughs, a litte abruptly. He doesn't wish to sound so sarcastic, but regardless it has a harsh ring. The farce is inside himself and directed at no one.

He turns to Armand and says, "Ah, so there's the story of how Daniel Molloy learned about life and death." Laced with unintended and recognized contempt. "Enough with me hogging this lovely date night conversation." His hand gestures to Armand in invitation.

Armand laughs, barely audible but his lips slack in a smile. Sometimes he really does like Daniel's mercurial shifts and bursts of cynicism. Only a vampire could find that delightful. "Are you asking me?" he replies, blinking at Daniel with purpose, still smiling.

Daniel sighs. "I'm just being a dick. But I won't turn down your side of the conversation."

Armand sits up. "Well, to answer: I never had such a lovely mortal moment." Daniel watches as the light of an incoming car catches Armand's eyes, shining bright for a flash from brown to dull gold. "And never like you, so late in my childhood I could synthesize a wealth of understanding on it. Children born before your modern era were born knowing about death, it seems. It was everywhere when I was mortal. You narrowly escaped it being born because the chances you will never reach the world _alive_ are such that ..." He paused. "It was expected that you wouldn't."

"You were born viewing death as just the opposite of life? It's a suitable point." Daniel can't stop a scoff, even a half-hearted one. "What about these poor modern vampires? Do they have to learn--?"

"No, I believe all humans are born knowing mortality, at least as instinct," Armand interrupts, curls shaking in a fierce nod. He points a finger at Daniel, a counter invitation. "What do you think instinct is?"

Daniel sits up this time and rolls his shoulders. "It's an innate pattern of behavior. But really, it's opposite of something gained through learning."

Armand agrees with a small, quick gesture. "That's a good answer. Survival is instinct, is it not? If life is the opposite of death, then we are all born knowing we need to live. We _learn_ to understand why."

"Your point is, we don't have to understand it so much these days because death isn't shoved at us."

"Precisely. Children learn the difference between life and death still. Or think they learn in this light-filled, clean world. But do they? Do people in this era really understand death? Its finality?" Armand does not say this in accusation, but the question feels meant for Daniel, out of all time and all earth, alone _. Does Daniel understand what it finally means to be dead?_

It's a fair question.

“What about people who never understand?” Daniel asks. “Can you be born someone that just can't cut it living? Can't ever understand why? What do you think?”

“Misery isn't new or modern. If you couldn't live or fathom it, you died. The end of the story.”

“Yeah, well, suicide isn't a new idea. I guess it's just easier now for someone to have their whole life trying to understand why they're alive.”

“We want to know why we exist. It's such a simple, primal question.”

“That's our struggle. When you look at anything familiar long enough or for the first time, you question what it is. Even if that's a mirror.”

A look of gloom passes Armand's features, just a furrow of eyebrow that vanishes.

Daniel presses on. “There's something else. We talk about life and the will to live like some big secret to figure out. It isn't. We only struggle to think it is because we can't accept realizing 'this is life, this is misery, I'm not special' and then moving on.”

“The will to live is finding the will to live?” says Armand with a wry smile. “What a philosophy to grasp.”

“We don't want people to give up on it. Has anyone asked the right questions to someone about to jump off a bridge? They just ask after.”

His hands are shaking.

*

_Respect what it is to live, Daniel_.

That's the start of the whole conversation. He had laughed in response to that, at Armand, not even cocky, just genuinely finding it funny.

"From you? What's respect to someone who profanes life every night?"

Armand's answer was patient, but laconic: "Then who better to respect life than I, a bringer of death?"

_Respect?_ Daniel asked.

_What do you know of death, Daniel, what have you truly understood?_

_*_

The car glides on, that small contained world, both lost in a smaller world of their thoughts. To answer Armand's questions earlier by not answering them, Daniel tells him of his first encounter with death _: A kid on drugs killed himself down the street from my house_. It is such an _intimate_ story of his history, that of course Armand wants to hear. He wants all of Daniel's history, gives precious little of his own.

The truth is, this has been on Daniel's mind, in various ways and means. The very nature of life and death has been roiling his thoughts more than usual and he's been brooding on opposites, incongruities. Contrasts. He sees them _everywhere_. He lives with one. This is the season of cosmic horror, the nubilous membrane barely covering everything, making shifting glimpses of _what lies beneath_ all the more confusing.

Daniel pulls out of his thoughts but says nothing finally, and plunges his hand out of window left open, into the night as if to grab it, fingers curled around black. Cold rain stings his hand; it's good and real, though, this slight easy pain. It burns all the wretchedness in his mind right into his skin.

"Death is just another opposite," he mutters bluntly, inwardly. _I feel like I understand it too well._

It's not so unimaginable that he spends all night thinking on the sweet nature of pain.

 


	2. Intents

The first time he sees Daniel's face, it's not as though it matters. Armand intends to kill him. Eventually. Perhaps not then. Perhaps he can learn more of this burgeoning mystery, this scenario that grows stranger by the hour.

Armand is _outraged_ at first. The sound of Louis' voice here is sacrilegious. It shouldn't be emanating from the dusty floor, from a plastic tape deck nestled amid animal skeletons and ruin. This isn't a place for the somber yet melodic timbre of Louis' voice, Louis telling stories, and lying by omission. (Where is a place for Louis' voice? Armand can't say _. He_ , after all, left Louis.)

Armand will admit to curiosity, stronger than anger or outrage. If he weren't curious, he would've instantly killed this little warm-blooded phantom and smashed the tapes. The boy's remains would dissolve into nothing more than bones, no more important than any other rat that died here. Humans necessitate a disposal. Rats scurrying in the dark do not.

The boy is lucky Armand is curious. Eternity, after all, is a long time to go without indulging one's curiosity. The nights are long, tedious, and interminable. Each one is like the other, and like the year before or the century before that. Slow, buffeting waves of time wear down your edges, that much was true. A once-sharp mind could be rendered dull by perpetuity, like a smooth tumbled stone.

Endurance is always one way to deal with living forever, and, as Armand figures, it's by no means an ideal way. Nothing is an anchor. Not _permanently_ anyway, and he's never found out how to anchor himself. 1625, 1825, 1925, what changes but the number and the setting? He could never wake up from the frothy, dream-like flow of year after year, the drifting, and the clinging to nothing it brought.

Not to mention that nearly every sudden uprooting has been born from someone else's involvement. His father, the slavers, Marius, Santino, Lestat and even Louis, to some extent. An endless life formed by the decisions of men: some good, some bad, some a century of nightmares.

He has three nights to ruminate on all this before he decides to deal with the problem in the basement.

 


	3. Lost

It gave Daniel a sick pleasure to know when he’d hit Armand verbally in just that sweet spot, just a hard enough barb to hurt him. The satisfaction was fleeting, as the look on Armand’s face – either the glassy doll stare or that miserable crumple, would wound him in a rebound. Armand looked so young when he was upset, even younger than when he laughed.

To see him cry gave Daniel misery or depending on how angry he was, misery with a sick thrill. He only thought of it as a sick because he knew he should feel bad about it and he did. But wasn’t Daniel hurting just as much, even more? And what would Armand do, but retaliate by being hurt himself! What a _bastard_. What a double-edged sword.

Daniel’s first great escape happened over a whole weekend. He left only fully intending to come back that night. Which, in retrospect, was hilarious as he was already in Austin by sundown and then spent the remainder of the night in El Paso. What was in El Paso and why was he there? He couldn’t tell Armand that when he asked. He was drunk when he booked the flight and drunk when the plane touched down.

Angrily booking a flight to Texas _was_ ridiculous, but then not everyone could just take a walk and calm down. When your lover is something like Armand, some distance has to be put between you and the creature that can read minds to just get some peace to sort out your own.

He called Armand three days later, not having realized three days had passed. This was very early on in this era of jailbreak and it frightened Daniel mightily, that lost sense of time. _That_ conversation had almost ended in an argument over the phone, when Armand objected to Daniel’s usage of the very word “jailbreak.”

“You didn’t escape me,” Armand replied, the patience in his voice never wavering but the warmth cooled by several degrees.

“Damn right I didn’t,” said Daniel, feeling every hour of whatever he’d done for three days and testy as a result. He hated pedantic bullshit. Armand was the _king_ of pedantic bullshit. “I mean, you’re coming to get me right now.”

“You called me.” So patient.

“Well, I’m out of my mind, I guess. I figured being gone for, what, an unintended 72 hours now would’ve made you more worried. ”

“Of course, I’m coming to get you now.”

“Some great jailbreak.”

“Daniel,” said Armand sharply, and Daniel had imagined a glass vase with a tiny, hairline fracture in it. Chipping away. It only slightly disgusted Daniel in this moment that goading Armand pleased him. But, as usual, the thrill was gone quickly.

“I’m sorry, don’t hang up,” Daniel added. “I’m tired.” He cradled the phone to his ear as though it were more than just a link to Armand, as if it were his lover’s hand.

Daniel slept, the jet had come for him, of course, and it wasn’t long after sunset when he’d reached home. He was still surprised when Armand was waiting to greet him outside. A lovely surprise, nonetheless. Armand was full of them.

 


	4. Palm Springs

All over Night Island, little things reminded Daniel of his mortal life, in a worrisome, vague way. One of Daniel’s favorite places was a small garden off the west terrace. It was not so much a garden as a greenhouse, accessible by house door, but more popularly, Daniel walked up the combed stone path, flanked by twin palms.

Daniel realized it reminded him of Palm Springs, and it was strange to feel that lovely dry aesthetic in the humid breath of Miami. So what if he hadn’t been to Palm Springs since the late 60s, he still thought it and couldn’t get the association out of his mind. Of course, it had to be a climate-controlled greenhouse, being filled with several species of night-blooming cacti, blossoms as ephemeral as Armand’s whims.

The entire western terrace was rebuilt once while Daniel was gone.

He didn’t care, not really, but at one point, memories were drowning Daniel, which is the crux of the matter. Memories he didn’t want and they were everywhere and none of them included Armand. That was neither painful nor comforting. It was just a sharp shock every time he saw or smelled or tasted or sensed something nostalgic. Whatever these things were depended on the moment, since the memory was a flash, all chaotic images, and fleeting. He would think, _I was someone else once before_ and it would bowl him over if he wasn’t careful.

He didn’t _want_ to be that person anymore, and yet, still living flesh and blood he was and just as disconnected from _that_ as the world of the dead. His 20s were such a decade of limbo; the space in which Daniel felt he occupied was too vast. To touch the past was painful, to think of the future was painful and remaining in the present was terrifying.

Did everyone have such a tough time in this decade of life? That was something he once said to Armand, very early in their theological debate/death threat/flirtation dance.

“I’m young but being young is different now,” Daniel had answered, not drunk enough for whatever question Armand had asked. “I remember thinking school was so terrible, but what people don’t tell you about being a young adult could fill a book. I’d wager your 20s are the worst.”

“I would not know,” said Armand, with a wry smile, his accent shaping the vowels so beautifully. That was all Daniel remembered thinking after.

Memories are funny. Either they make kings of peasants in remembrance or they distort the past so that things we hoped to remember are relegated to the dust and debris lining our minds like birdcage feathers.

 


	5. Obligation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part of a larger drabble challenge.

"It looks stupid if we're both wearing sunglasses."  
Armand stopped. "Fluorescent lights." He gestured upward. "Do you want people to stare, Daniel?" He folded his arms, and waited patiently for Daniel walking up. It was early in the evening, and the grocery store was brilliantly lit, even outside.  
"I don't care." Daniel pushed his sunglasses into his hair. "I've got a hangover. Still."  
"And who's fault is that?"  
"Not mine," Daniel snorted. "And you wanted to go shopping."  
Sigh. "Because you won't feed yourself."   
"Can you blame me?" Daniel asked, suddenly miserable. "Food stopped tasting good a long time ago."


End file.
